The present invention relates to a stowable vehicle seat and particularly to a stowable vehicle seat that has improved operability.
A stowable vehicle seat has been known, as is a technique in which a front-side leg portion that is lockable to and unlockable from a vehicle body floor side is disposed on the front side of a seat cushion forming the vehicle seat and a support portion rotatable in the front-and-rear direction on a front side of a containing recess portion (stowage recess portion) formed in the vehicle body floor is disposed on the rear end portion side thereof, lock of the front-side leg portion is unlocked, and the vehicle seat is rotated rearward and contained in the containing recess portion in a state in which a seat back is folded onto the seat cushion, for example.
That is, the prior-art stowable vehicle seat is, as shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-082698 (“the '698 Publication”), configured such that lock of the front-side leg portion to the vehicle body floor side is unlocked by a lever operation and the seat back is folded by a pulling operation of a strap, while the seat cushion is rotated rearward at the same time around rotating shafts disposed on the right and left sides of the rear end portion of the seat cushion so that the vehicle seat is containable in the containing recess portion.
The technique described in the '698 Publication is configured such that lock of a reclining mechanism is unlocked and the seat back is folded onto the seat cushion by the pulling operation of the strap, and the vehicle seat is rotated in the stowing rotating direction to perform a stowing operation.
However, since the above technique is configured such that the reclining mechanism is unlocked in conjunction with the pulling operation of the strap, if the pulling operation of the strap is stopped during the rotation, the reclining mechanism is locked again even if the seat back is in the open state. That is, a problem might occur in that the seat back cannot be stowed due to the difference in the operation methods.